We take a look at ammunition maker Gorilla to learn about what makes their ammo top of the tier.
When it comes to ammo production, I am a novice at best. I reload my own stuff at home for various calibers and I have family and friends who have spent years perfecting the perfect loads for optimal accuracy in a given rifle, so when Gorilla sent Guns and Tactics some ammo to test, I was like what do we do with this? The editor said SHOOT IT!
We started down the road with making arrangements to borrow a chronograph and setup different environments, but at the end of the day, does it perform in multiple guns?
Gorilla is a relatively new ammunition manufacturer using state-of-the-art machinery, quality control and testing. During an interview with one of the company’s directors, I was blown away with the amount back-end systems they have employed.
If you want the best performance from ammunition, you have to utilize the finest components available. Gorilla has spent countless hours working up the best possible load data, sometimes testing hundreds of combinations of powders, charge weights, primers, cases and projectiles before settling on the most consistent and accurate load possible.
When you are cranking out millions of rounds, QC has to be at the top of the list. Without giving away their trade secrets, I can tell you that their automated system utilizes a premium linear ammunition-loading style machine that inspects things like flash hole size, powder measurement, etc. But Gorilla has taken it QC process one-step further by adding a fiber optic measurement system to inspect the overall length of the load and validation of the consistency of each powder drop with better than 1/10 grain accuracy.
To say quality assurance is huge at Gorilla would be an understatement, their QC and production inspection equipment is hands down top-of-the-line with measurement capability down to 0.0005”. That guarantees each round produced is the best is can be. Their precision quality assurance system is also paired with laser inspection system and high-speed photography to measure the loaded ammunition for numerous critical dimensions.
Lastly, this sophisticated system collects and stores all the data collected during the inspection process by lot number being produced to allow for exceptional lot traceability.
When it comes to factory testing, Gorilla has built a complete ballistics lab capable of testing pressures and velocities, as well as creating extreme environmental conditions from hot dry deserts to humid tropics and even arctic extremes to -40?F. They use an Oehler System 85 to record velocity and both chamber and port pressures while the cartridges are test fired in a H&S Precision Universal Receiver using PCB Piezotronics case mouth and conformal transducers. All this translates into the fact that Gorilla Ammunition has experts that develop loads using state of the art equipment. All of their loads utilize match grade primers, bullets and factory new brass.
What does this all mean? In our test guns, we used a Rainier Arms RUC Mod2 AR15 in 556 and 300BLK, Cross Machine and Tool AR10, DRD Praetus AR10 and finally a FN FNAR 308.
In all of the guns except the DRD, the ammunition functioned without any FTF or FTE’s. We tried several mags from Magpul, HK, Lancer and Mil-Spec without any issues whatsoever.
Shooting off of a sandbag on the range bench, we had no problem maintaining sub-moa at 100 and 200 yards. The average grouping on the 556 and 300blk was .855 with 3-shots groups spread out over 5 different firings.
The 308 performed even better in our test guns with an average group of .561 with 3-shots. I did have one flier with the AR10 but I am guessing that is the shooter and not the ammo.
After concluding our test, it was determined the bolt used in the DRD had a faulty ejection spring causing the spent shell to not extract. Once fixed, the ammo fed without issue.
Gorilla currently manufacturers ammunition for the 5.56, 300 AAC and 308 with various loads and bullet weights available. Overall I am very pleased with their ammo and hope try it out in an upcoming 3-gun competition.
For more information, check out www.gorillaammo.com or to purchase, visit www.Rainierarms.com.
